This week’s round-up of the latest mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, and account moves include Nvidia, Racing Post owner Spotlight Sports Group and betTom.
Deal Desk rounds-up the latest moves across the global affiliate and digital marketing industry and why it matters.
This week, Nvidia acquires AI platform Hugging Face; Spotlight Sports Group enters the gaming vertical with Engage Games partnership; and betTom continues its marketing spree with deals with EFL clubs.
Nvidia buys AI platform Hugging Face
Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face in a $12.9bn deal.
Nvidia is known for making the chips used to train and run AI systems; while Hugging Face, which was founded in 2026, is a popular online open-source platform used by developers and researchers to share and test AI models and tools.
Under the agreement, the tech giant will pay roughly $11.9bn to Hugging Face investors and offer up to $1bn in stock-based incentives for employees who join the company.
According to the companies, more than 18 million developers, researchers and creators use Hugging Face to share over three million AI models, 500,000 datasets and one million applications. While more than 200,00 organisations use the platform to discover, evaluate and deploy their AI tools.
Nvidia founder, Jensen Huang, confirmed Hugging Face will “continue to support open source and open weight models from across the ecosystem”.
He wrote in a blog on the company’s website: “As the opportunity for open models accelerates, Hugging Face can serve the global AI community at unprecedented scale.
“NVIDIA’s infrastructure, engineering and global reach can help improve platform reliability, safety, model evaluation, inference and deployment capabilities, while preserving the open ecosystem that made Hugging Face foundational.”
Leaders take
This deal marks a pivotal moment for Nvidia in the AI software space, especially as the likes of Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI race to build their own chips. And for marketers, this is huge… it significantly shifts how marketers build, secure and deploy their AI tools.
Currently, many marketing teams rely on the closed-loop systems of the walled gardens like Google and Meta. By combining Hugging Face’s open-source platform with Nvidia’s computing power, it could give marketers the key to unlock running their own, customised AI tools on their own systems efficiently, securely and at scale.
Spotlight Sports Group partners with Engage Games
Spotlight Sports Group (SSG), the tech and media shop which publishes the Racing Post, has partnered with Engage Games.
The deal expands SSG’s services into games for the first time and will combine the company’s global product and content distribution, brand and partner network with Engage Games’s free-to-play and pay-to-play games.
The company’s racing titles will be powered by its Smart View Engine, extending the reach of its data beyond racecards and tipping products and into games.
SSG partners will have access to bespoke games designed to solve specific commercial challenges and tailored to their objectives using live game metrics.
Rob Brown, B2B growth director at SSG, said: “This partnership marks a significant step for SSG as we extend our product capability into the games space. […] By combining Engage’s games engine with our data, content and global distribution, we’re able to provide bespoke, data-informed games across racing and sport.
“In addition, our racing titles, powered by Smart View, bring the intelligence behind our most successful products into an entirely new format.”
Ryan Lawrence, founder of Engage Games, added: “[…] Partnering with SSG – one of the most trusted names in global racing and sports betting – reflects the reputation and results we’ve built, and it’s the natural next step in our mission, to get better game experiences into the hands of as many players as possible.
“Through SSG’s network, we can now put proven, performance-driven capabilities in front of operators and rights holders worldwide.”
Leaders take
This partnership signifies SSG’s launch into the gaming vertical. Engage Games services include fantasy, predictor, survivor and bet builder mechanics across both racing and sport. By combining that with SSG’s Smart View technology and data, the firm is building a global pipeline for bespoke gaming products.
For marketers, rights holders and affiliates in this space, it offers a new way to leverage an integrated gaming ecosystem and low entry barrier – through fantasy games – to capture first-party data such as emails.
betTOM signs deals with EFL clubs Burnley FC and Stockport County
UK challenger betting brand, betTOM, has signed two new deals in the English Football League (EFL) with Burnley FC and Stockport County.
It follows the deal signed with League One club Peterborough United, announced earlier.
betTOM is now the official betting partner of all three clubs and is also the shorts sponsor for Burnley during the 2026/27 season.
As part of the deal, the operator’s branding will appear on both the men’s and women’s home, away and third kits.
betTOM’s logo will also be visible at Turf Moor, including in the home and away dugouts, as well as on LED boards around the 22,000-seater stadium.
On the deal with Burnley, betTOM chief executive, Paul Colley, said: “Burnley is a great club with a big fan base, and we’re excited to be their official betting partner for the season ahead.
“Having the betTOM brand appear on the shorts, dugout and LED boards will be great exposure.
“We’ve had a very promising first year in operation in the UK, having only started in May 2025, and this level of sponsorship will help us continue that growth.”
Leaders take
betTom’s multi-club sponsorship deals across the EFL signs a strategic shift in how challenger betting brands are currently navigating the UK sports marketing scene. Operators like Flutter and Entain dominate mass media, which makes it hard for new entrants to compete on the big screens. Therefore by embedding themselves on kits, stadium LED boards and player kits, alongside collaborative digital and social media activity, betTOM is building brand awareness and trust.
The betting brand is also capitalising on the Premier League’s voluntary ban on front-of-shirt gambling sponsors. By partnering with high-profile clubs like Burnley – relegated from the Premier League last season – betTOM is capturing premium visibility at a fraction of the cost.
Other notable deals
WPP is considering selling one of its three campuses based on the South Bank, in London. It is understood the holding company is expecting to raise £100m from the Rose Court offices. The sale is likely to be part of chief executive Cindy Rose’s Elevate28 strategy, which includes a £500m savings target.
DoorDash has partnered with Circana LLC to bring independent, third-party measurement capabilities to its advertising arm. A select number of advertisers can now see the incremental business impact of their ads across sponsored products and sponsored brands on DoorDash.
NIQ, a consumer intelligence company, has partnered with Similarweb, to build a new solution to help brands, retailers and tech platforms understand how products are purchased in the agentic AI world.
